Customer Reviews

Hershey Chocolate Magic Maker

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

We just bought this for our 7 year old girl. Our 5 year old girl and our 8 year old boy just love it also! I wasn't sure what to expect since it seemed to have mixed reviews. It might take a while to heat up and properly melt the chocolate, but none of my kids are complaining. I find that if you let it heat the chocolate for 5 or 6 minutes instead of the 3 minutes recommended, it melts to a much softer consistency and works better. The molds produce perfect little chocolates everytime. Once one mold of four chocolates is poured, the kids put it in the freezer. By time the next mold is poured, they are getting the first one out of the freezer and chowing down!

As far as the complaints I've seen here on Amazon, most of them don't seem valid from my experience:
a)We have used this at least 4 times already for a total of about 16 to 18 molds and the batteries still seem to be going strong (others said the batteries died after one use)
b) Cleaning is not a big problem. People have made a big deal over needing to use a philips head scredriver -- so get out a little screwdriver and take the plunger tube out and clean it. I find that a little HOT water cleans the molds and plunger and tube in a little under 2 minutes. Add another 30 to 45 seconds for re-assembling it and your done!
c) Who said it is unsanitary and can only be used once because it can't be cleaned??? See "B" above.
d) As far as just melting chocolate over the stove and pouring into the molds instead, ask your kids which is more fun -- Chocolate Magic wins hands down! Let them have a little fun and think they are making chocolate will ya?
e) As far as the kids that used it once and no more -- I guess they don't have much attention span or imagination and I doubt they stay interested in much for too long a time if they tired so quickly at having thier own chocolate factory!

Bottom line: for this price, go for it and the kids SHOULD have fun with it. Take a few minutes to clean it, help the kids if they need it and enjoy the treats!

My daughters, ages 4 and 7 have had this machine for over a year. We have made lots of chocolate candies with it. They both can use the machine and have helped in the clean up. My daughters have made chocolate lollipops with it too. It is a fun toy to get them acquainted with the kitchen. We have not had one single problem with it. In fact, my daughters love this so much we can't keep chocolate chips in the house. LOL!

This has ended up being fun for my 5 year old, but it requires some work on my part. There is some warm up time for the melter (8 min) and I wait 5 minutes (instead of 3) after I add the chocolate chips before pushing into the molds. This is no big deal- children should learn to be patient and wait for the payoff. The chocolates actually come out pretty. We made four molds worth (16 candies)fairly quickly. Two things would have made it better: having it plug in instead of using batteries, and having the plunger part come out for cleaning without having to unscrew it from the base. You have to use a phillips screwdriver to remove that part of the unit for cleaning. So it requires some work but my daughter really liked it and we gave the candies to Grandma as a gift.

This toy is stated for children eight year and older> I can agree with this but note that my younger children enjoyed the process as well of course with super vision. The heating tube does hold about 30 t0 40 chips but we found this an ample amount to fill a tray. Our machine heated quickly and stayed warm. Cleaning did take some time but with hot water it wasn't too bad.

I made the chocolates with my 9 year old, he enjoyed it and they came out pretty good. But taking a toy apart with a phillips screwdriver to clean it is ridiculous. I agree - I'd just as soon have bought the molds and just melt the chocolate on the stove. My son doesn't want to do this - he enjoyed using the plunger and all that.

My son picked this out because making chocolates sounded fun to him. It wasn't too hard to operate and it worked fairly well but when we tried to use it the next night it wouldn't work anymore. We put new batteries in it and it wouldn't even warm up.

Upon turning on the machine, it must warm up for 8 minutes. No problem. Only 35 chips can go in at a time. That means the chips must be counted (time consuming) and then you have to try to get them into the little tiny hopper (not an easy task, it should have been funnel shaped, also time consuming). Then you must wait 3 minutes while the next 35 chips warm up. Try holding a child's attention through this.

As if that is not bad enough, by the time you get to the second tray, the batteries are already dying and it takes 3.5 minutes to warm up. The third and final trays took 4 minutes. Well, I'm not exactly sure how much 4 D-cell batteries cost, but I can guarantee you that I'll not be putting any more in that machine. Why wouldn't they have just made it electric? It's not as though a child can use it without supervision anyway.

Very disappointing. We'll go back to melting on the stove.
Oh, and I'm only guessing on the durability rating. I really don't know and have no intention of finding out how many uses one can get out of this product.

My 6 year old daughter was so excited to receive this as a gift and couldn't wait to get started. However, we never got the machine to work. We put the whole thing together and it would not heat up so you can't melt the chocolate. We took it apart and checked the directions - still didn't work.

I guess this worked to my advantage as I would have had to take it apart to clean it each time it was used which would have involved a screwdriver.

This item is not child friendly and is of very poor quality.

This was very fun to use. My son Chris and I really enjoyed making the candy. It was slow but worked pretty well. We would get this item again but wished it was electric as it would have heated faster. Cleanup was not easy and I didn't like the idea of unscrewing the item to clean it. Overall, it was a fun experience.

I like the Hershey Chocolate Magic Maker because
you get to make your own chocolate candies.The only problem is
it takes a long time.